Carol Huynh first became aware of the tempest brewing while on-set for CBC radio’s Canada Reads initiative a little over a year ago. A twitter message had alerted her to the storm clouds. She didn’t, quite frankly, put much stock in it. Wrestling, as old as the Games themselves, dropped from the Summer Olympic calendar?

Make way for the new generation of classical music stars. They don’t want to change the world, but some want to reinvent the way we think about classical music. And whether by happenstance or careful calibration, Calgary classical music fans are enjoying a winter filled with performances by some of the premier young musicians in the world.

The Calgary Stampeders did some tinkering on the return side of their roster, losing a popular individual in the always-smiling Larry Taylor and gaining a talented young man in the form of Jock Sanders.

Who to cheer for: Sidney Crosby or Alexander Ovechkin? The answer seems obvious — unless you are a Russian living in Calgary. “For me, it doesn’t matter. I am for a good game — as long as it’s Canada or Russia,” laughs Viktor Safronov. “I am happy for both.”

Amsterdam has history, but it sure isn’t old. Hip and happening, the art enclave and adult playground has a knack for fusing its rich past with liberal pursuits. While many folks think of Europe as a summer destination, winter will reward you with less crowds and illuminating activities to brighten up gloomy days. For an enlightening winter fix, consider going Dutch.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Russia should not be handed a veto over how the world responds to an unprecedented threat to its security, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday as Canada and nine other nations backed the American position on Syria.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — President Barack Obama acknowledged deep divisions at home and abroad on Friday over his call for military action in Syria — and conceded the possibility he’ll fail to sway the American public. He refused to say whether he would act without passage of congressional authorization for a strike in response to chemical weapons use.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration faced a tough examination of its plans for military strikes in Syria on Wednesday as the debate moved into the opposition-controlled House of Representatives, where the significant support the proposal has received in the Senate will be harder to find.

Four pretty young women — two of them grown-up Disney stars whose appearance in and out of bikinis represents a kind of cultural perversion, as if Mickey Mouse were cast in a porn film — decide to leave their boring college town and go to Florida for spring break. They don’t have money, so they rob the local Chicken Shack, terrorizing customers with fake guns. They arrive to a bacchanal of beer, drugs, toplessness and the kind of aggressive sexual posing that make you think Dante could have set a whole new circle of hell at a motel pool in St. Petersburg.

The Russians may have lost the cold war, but they sure win their fair share of Honens International Piano Competitions. This year’s winner was Pavel Kolesnikov (from Siberia), and in 2009, the winner was Georgy Tchaidze, the son of a pair of chemical engineers who was born in St. Petersburg and grew up in a small town in Central Russia.

For every emerging Calgary playwright who’s been asked to cut 20 minutes from their latest draft, who’s stuck and can’t find the dramatic throughline, just remember this: Anton Chekhov was once an emerging playwright too. It was 1896, in St. Petersburg. Chekhov was a physician and short story writer trying to break into the theatre scene.

In December, the Canadian Football League’s rudderless Ottawa expansion franchise, set to debut in 2014, contacted Wally Buono and inquired whether the B.C. Lions boss would be interested in taking over their startup operation. This month, it’s the Montreal Alouettes who have a vacancy to fill.

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